Concluding my week long Twitter posts I’m listing a few good links to more Twitter resources:

Filed under: Friday Finds

Now that I finally gave in and signed up for Twitter, I want to add my Twitter feed to my blog. And as one might suspect, Twitter offers a few options to help you get their product on your site. Here’s how I put my Twitter updates in the TechTraction sidebar.

Filed under: How-To & Tech Tips

I was extremely skeptical about Twitter when I first heard about it. I even blasted it as a “fad” in a previous post. And while I’m still not convinced that Twitter has real long term value, I do agree it does have value — at least for right now. And now that I’ve changed my position on the current value of Twitter, I finally signed up and started tweeting.

Filed under: Tech Commentary

On Wednesday 5/21/2008 I detailed the steps I went through to solve my nephew’s unmountable boot volume problem. Fortunately for my nephew the problem wasn’t nearly as catastrophic as he originally thought, and I was able to get his machine back up and running. Unfortunately not all Windows boot failures are the same, and not all of them are easily remedied. If you’re experiencing a boot failure different then my nephew’s, you should check out FixYa (a technical support, instruction, and repair service). They have a fairly extensive list of common boot failure errors with recommended solutions.

Filed under: Friday Finds

My nephew had his first encounter with the infamous Blue Screen of Death which left his desktop computer utterly useless. Having been appointed the family “computer guy” many years ago, I received the casual, yet mildly panicked, inquiry, “Hey, can you fix Thomas’ computer? It says something about an unmountable boot thingy.”

Filed under: How-To & Tech Tips

Despite loving my Sony eReader (model PRS-500) I’m putting it up for sale on eBay. I do still love the idea of being able to carry around hundreds of books in something the size of a paperback. Unfortunately, since I got the eReader late last summer, I’ve barely used it. Rather than let it sit […]

Filed under: Off Topic

On Friday, May 9, 2008, InfoWorld reported that Clear Hat Consulting has developed a rootkit that could run in an obscure part of a computer’s microprocessor making it 100% undetectable. Not only have they written such a rootkit but Clear Hat plans to demonstrate their “proof-of-concept” creation at the Black Hat Security conference in Las Vegas this August. Is it just me, or does anyone else have a fundamental problem with a guided tour of what could be the most malicious piece of software ever written?

Filed under: Tech Commentary

Since my recent hard drive issues, I’ve been thinking about different approaches to the basic “computer backup.” During my daydreams I wondered about a specific backup facility for the Thunderbird email client. Yes, a basic system level file backup can save all of my Thunderbird email data, but is there a way to backup email from within Thunderbird itself?

Filed under: Friday Finds

I’ve been doing a lot of work over the past year with PHP, and have been loving this language for dynamic web page development. I program in a couple of other languages so I have a few personal preferences for how I write code regardless of the language. Therefore, I often write standard if statements in PHP the same way I do in other languages; however, there are at least two other ways to write a PHP if statement that I often forget (old habits die hard) and am writing today’s post a quick “cheat sheet” type of reference for myself, and anyone else that needs a quick reminder of the available PHP if statement styles.

Filed under: How-To & Tech Tips

I’ve been having some problems with my computer’s hard drive recently. The drive is actually a RAID level 0 two drive configuration. And while RAID 0 technically isn’t RAID, because it offers no data redundancy, I set up my desktop computer at this RAID level to make two 250 GB SATA 3 drives into one large and very speedy 500GB drive. I would have gone for a RAID level that offered some data redundancy, but my budget at the time did not allow for a third drive. Now I’m suffering a little pain from that decision.

Filed under: Friday Finds